A story for another day #5: Walkie Talkie + Dixie = Nothing Good

Dixie was a gorgeous horse, absolutely stunning in my opionion and I fell in love with him as soon as I set my eyes on him. He was a gorgeous dun with a dorsal stripe and black stockings and an incredible mane that really topped him off. It was black underneath but the top layer was an incredible silvery colour the likes I've never seen before.

I soon found out he had ringbone arthritis and Sarah-Annes family were seeing if he could be used for light trekking. If not he would go back to his owners. After my little escapade in A story for another day #3: The Devil Mare I was asked if I wanted to ride him. I jumped up and he was an absolute dream the whole time. After that he was one of my favourites.

So the next day we went for another ride. I was going to ride Dixie again, I caught him but when I went to swing up he wouldn't stand still and was acting a bit funny. Grace said she would try him. She took him to the water trough, and slowly slid her weight onto him. As soon as her butt was on his back he took off in a bucking frenzy. Huge, huge bucks for a horse with ringbone arthritis. After he had settled down she got off, gave me a leg up and we went for the ride. He was fine the whole time.

The next day camp started so the of us couldn't go out together for various reasons. Instead Grace and Christina took some horses out to exercise, and Sarah-Anne and I went about 30 mins after them. I was on Dixie bareback, and Sarah-Anne was on a horse I can't remember at the moment. We decided to do one of the basic tracks that takes you around part of their farm and then back to the home paddock. We had a walkie talkie on us as did Christina and Grace so we could keep in touch.

The first part of the ride went fine, and then we came to the bottom of a hill that we always cantered up. Suddenly the walkie talkie that was sitting in the front pocket of my hoodie came alive, it was Christina "Katie, this is Christina. Come in Katie." I pulled the walkie talkie out of my pocket, and held the reins in one hand. "Recieving Christina, go ahead." (As you can see we had fun using all the walkie talkie type phrases). "We're just up the top the hill in the trees" she said "We can see you." Suddenly Dixie skittered sideways, but I easily sat on. "Oh I can't see you" I replied "Where abouts are you talking about?" "Um we are about..." and thats when it happened, Dixie started bucking. Small bucks at first but they got bigger and bigger as Christina kept talking. I jammed the walkie talkie back into my pocket and tried to calm Dixie down while trying to stay on at the same time. But he got more upset the more Christina talked. I prayed and willed with all of my heart for Christian to just shut up but it wasn't happening.

So my options raced through my head, I could either pull the walkie talkie out and toss it onto the ground and hopefully Dixie would stop. But it was an expensive piece of equimpent and I didn't want to be responsible for it breaking on impact, or perhaps having Dixie smash it when he was doing his little bucking dance.

OR

Throw the walkie talkie to Sarah-Anne. But unfortunately my aim is bad at the best of times and trying to do it while on a bucking horse would just be silly. It probably wouldn't reach its target and end up getting smashed on the ground.

OR

Somehow pull the walkie talkie out, press the right buttons and tell Christina to be quiet all the while trying to stay on and calm my horse down.

OR

Just jump off. I really didn't want to do this as I hate horses getting the better of me in these sorts of situations . If I could ride the bucks and get through this it would be better in the end for both of us.

Still Christina talked, I could hear her trying to explain where they were standing. I knew she could see us as she said so before so I knew she could see what Dixie was doing. I hoped that she would put two and two together and stop talking but she didn't and as a result his bucks just got bigger and harder to sit.

It was (as they say) 'do or die', I knew that I would probably get bucked off in the next couple of seconds and I would probably land hard, maybe even breaking the walkie talkie while I was at it and so I just jumped off.

Dixie stopped as soon as I was off and just at the time the walkie talkie went silent. I was so angry! If I had stayed on that second longer I might have been able to get him to stop. I pulled the walkie talkie out of my pocket, walked up to Sarah-Anne and gave it to her. I was not going to have the happen to me again.

I had to walk a bit to find a slope so I could vault back on as Dixie was quite a big horse (don't dispute me on this Sarah-Anne haha). We went on with the ride and Dixie was fine after that except for one small buck when I wouldn't let him trot when he wanted to.

Christina and Grace were back at the home paddock when we arrived. "Oh hey we saw Dixie bucking" Christina said when we jumped off "What was wrong?" I couldn't help but laugh as I explained why Dixie had been bucking. "Oh I'm so sorry!" she said. I told her not to worry, these things happen.